1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a terminal apparatus, an information processing system, and an information processing method that provides information over a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Systems for providing electronic information related to a printed paper medium to a user viewing the printed paper medium are conventionally known. An example of such a system is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2010-140250.
According to Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2010-140250, a management server extracts features from original data of a printed paper medium using a feature extraction scheme appropriate for recognizing an image which includes text, prepares indexes based on the extracted features, and registers the indexes. More specifically, the management server performs a partial search process on a partial image, which is acquired by a user by capturing an image of the printed paper medium with a mobile camera phone or the like and then transmitted to the management server. The management server identifies a text or an article in the partial image, and transmits article information to the user's mobile camera phone.
According to Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2010-140250, the management server can append a uniform resource locator (URL) of a related content to the article information to be transmitted to the user's mobile camera phone. Accordingly, the user can view not only the article information transmitted to the user's mobile camera phone but also the related content at the URL.
Meanwhile, application software (hereinafter, “image-capture-and-transmission application”) into which an image capturing function and a function of transmitting a captured image to a management server are integrated can be installed in a mobile camera phone of a user. The image-capture-and-transmission application provides convenience to the user by eliminating the user's need to designate a URL of the management server and launch the captured-image transmitting function each time.
It is expected that, if the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application are available from another application, the convenience will be further enhanced. For example, functionality of an event application for some event may be extended so that the event application can use the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application. This extension allows a user to acquire content specific to the event based on a captured image by utilizing the functions of the image-capture-and-transmission application available in the event application.
As described above, conventionally, to make the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application available from the event application, a method of incorporating the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application into the event application is typically used. This method allows a user to utilize the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application without sacrificing usability or the like. Furthermore, because this method allows the user to utilize the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application and the event application as a single application, the user can perform a series of operations smoothly.
However, the method described above is disadvantageous in that porting the functions provided by the image-capture-and-transmission application into the event application requires long-time development and much manpower, which lead to an increase in cost. Furthermore, because the development is from scratch, long time will disadvantageously be required from specification study to the actual development. More specifically, an increase in the time period from specification study to start of the development not only results in a great rise in cost but also makes it difficult to adapt to a quick need of a customer. For these reasons, development for causing functions of applications to collaborate or integrating them can lead to inefficiency and non-flexibility.
Under the circumstances, there is a need to make it possible to easily configure a function, which is provided by an application and utilized by a further application, depending on the purpose of the further application.